Comments on: Domain Development & Liquidity: SEO will work for Equity http://www.johnon.com/487/domains-for-development.html I think there's an opinion on that subject lying around here somewhere.... Sun, 05 Jul 2009 02:15:33 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.7 by: Joel McLaughlin SEO Consultant http://www.johnon.com/487/domains-for-development.html#comment-128314 Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:33:36 +0000 http://www.johnon.com/487/domains-for-development.html#comment-128314 Wow, interesting post. I didn't even know there were domain stocks - silly me, I need to read more online. lol Wow, interesting post. I didn’t even know there were domain stocks - silly me, I need to read more online. lol

]]> by: john andrews http://www.johnon.com/487/domains-for-development.html#comment-99820 Tue, 04 Mar 2008 06:29:07 +0000 http://www.johnon.com/487/domains-for-development.html#comment-99820 I was asked to point to the celebs.com press release and completely forgot.. it's at http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS250410+22-Jan-2008+PRN20080122 Adam at <a href="http://www.domainnamenews.com/">DomainNameNews</a> tipped me off to a <a href="http://www.dnjournal.com/domainsales.htm">mention on DNJournal</a> that Celebs.com was sold back in September of 2007 in a private sale for $110,000. It appears the buyer is the one now looking for a development partner. If Aaron is correct (above), the pressure is on. I was asked to point to the celebs.com press release and completely forgot.. it’s at http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS250410+22-Jan-2008+PRN20080122
Adam at DomainNameNews tipped me off to a mention on DNJournal that Celebs.com was sold back in September of 2007 in a private sale for $110,000. It appears the buyer is the one now looking for a development partner. If Aaron is correct (above), the pressure is on.

]]> by: aaron wall http://www.johnon.com/487/domains-for-development.html#comment-84516 Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:22:20 +0000 http://www.johnon.com/487/domains-for-development.html#comment-84516 In that vertical you could spend $100 a month on AdSense to build that 1,000 visitor traffic stream. Due to the trashy nature of celebrity gossip, I wouldn't be against registering celebs.biz for $3,000 and keeping all the profits. And you don't need a great domain in to succeed in that market...only a willingness to promote speculative gossipy trash. 1,000 uniques a month is nothing in a market where leading channels get 1,000 times that much traffic. http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/celebs.com?site0=celebs.com&site1=perezhilton.com&site2=thesuperficial.com&y=r&z=3&h=300&w=610&range=6m&size=Medium http://siteanalytics.compete.com/celebs.com perezhilton.com thesuperficial.com/?metric=uv <strong>@Editor's note: </strong>So Aaron has challenged if there is adequate value by showing compete/Alexa traffic data, which suggests celebs.com is holding very little value compared to others in that space. I've attached a chart here... celebs.com is down to 1-2k after declining for 6 months from ~5k, and doesn't even appear on the chart once the traffic axis has been normalized for the big players (orange is perez, green is superficial, and blue is celebs.com running along the baseline). Also compete says celebs.com is off 70% for the year, which could reflect a cessation in PPC spend as much as anything else... again complicating any claim of type-in traffic. This example demonstrates the purity of domaining as understood by domainers. I have the domain name, so I am a partner without needing to do anything else. <img align="middle" title="celebrity gossip seo" alt="celebrity gossip seo" src="http://www.johnon.com/images/celebrity-gossip-traffic.gif" /> But I have to point out that these toolbar traffic numbers are not absolute. Below is a chart showing this johnon.com blog and celebs.com together. Notice that I was running at  a fraction of celebs.com traffic until July 2007, at which time (according to compete) my blog "took off" to almost 8 times the celebs.com traffic. Why did my blog "take off"? It didn't... compete started counted differently, having gotten itself included into new add-ons. Why didn't celebs.com show a similar rise if it was simply an accounting change? Because it was an irregular change... no one knows which sites are impacted by the changes nor how much.... which makes site comparisons very, very sketchy in my book. According to compete, my blog is up 2500% for the year, compared to celebs.com's being down 70%. <img src="http://www.johnon.com/images/celebrity-gossip-traffic2.gif" /> In that vertical you could spend $100 a month on AdSense to build that 1,000 visitor traffic stream. Due to the trashy nature of celebrity gossip, I wouldn’t be against registering celebs.biz for $3,000 and keeping all the profits. And you don’t need a great domain in to succeed in that market…only a willingness to promote speculative gossipy trash. 1,000 uniques a month is nothing in a market where leading channels get 1,000 times that much traffic.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/celebs.com?site0=celebs.com&site1=perezhilton.com&site2=thesuperficial.com&y=r&z=3&h=300&w=610&range=6m&size=Medium

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/celebs.com perezhilton.com thesuperficial.com/?metric=uv

@Editor’s note: So Aaron has challenged if there is adequate value by showing compete/Alexa traffic data, which suggests celebs.com is holding very little value compared to others in that space. I’ve attached a chart here… celebs.com is down to 1-2k after declining for 6 months from ~5k, and doesn’t even appear on the chart once the traffic axis has been normalized for the big players (orange is perez, green is superficial, and blue is celebs.com running along the baseline). Also compete says celebs.com is off 70% for the year, which could reflect a cessation in PPC spend as much as anything else… again complicating any claim of type-in traffic. This example demonstrates the purity of domaining as understood by domainers. I have the domain name, so I am a partner without needing to do anything else.
celebrity gossip seo

But I have to point out that these toolbar traffic numbers are not absolute. Below is a chart showing this johnon.com blog and celebs.com together. Notice that I was running at  a fraction of celebs.com traffic until July 2007, at which time (according to compete) my blog “took off” to almost 8 times the celebs.com traffic. Why did my blog “take off”? It didn’t… compete started counted differently, having gotten itself included into new add-ons. Why didn’t celebs.com show a similar rise if it was simply an accounting change? Because it was an irregular change… no one knows which sites are impacted by the changes nor how much…. which makes site comparisons very, very sketchy in my book. According to compete, my blog is up 2500% for the year, compared to celebs.com’s being down 70%.

]]> by: aaron wall http://www.johnon.com/487/domains-for-development.html#comment-84469 Thu, 24 Jan 2008 01:44:44 +0000 http://www.johnon.com/487/domains-for-development.html#comment-84469 Providing everything but the domain name is risky partnership strategy when I can buy good domains for $5,000 to $10,000 and then keep 100%. <strong>@Aaron:</strong><em> the <a href="http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080122/netu097.html?.v=34">celebs.com press release</a> offers a value proposition for the domain name as an asset-- "Celebs.com benefits from a large volume of natural daily traffic, and it is a highly brandable and easy to remember domain name" --  so I assume they have numbers to be considered when proposing a deal. The bigger question of how valuable is a generic domain name in the celebrity traffic market is a good one. Maybe it's a quick start to monthly cash flow with celebs.com, and maybe that has an assignable value? </em> Providing everything but the domain name is risky partnership strategy when I can buy good domains for $5,000 to $10,000 and then keep 100%.

@Aaron: the celebs.com press release offers a value proposition for the domain name as an asset– “Celebs.com benefits from a large volume of natural daily traffic, and it is a highly brandable and easy to remember domain name” –  so I assume they have numbers to be considered when proposing a deal. The bigger question of how valuable is a generic domain name in the celebrity traffic market is a good one. Maybe it’s a quick start to monthly cash flow with celebs.com, and maybe that has an assignable value?

]]>